TBATE - Not Bound By Fate

Part 38

It's the week before the attack. I'm currently in director Goodsky's office alongside Viron, Tess, Varay, Alea and Aya. Right now we were going over the plans to defend the academy one last time to make sure everything was accounted for.

"Do we have enough healers?" Varay asked.

"Yes, we do. And before you ask, I already hired enough adventurers to stand guard and help clean up the mana beasts. That way we can focus on capturing Draneve." Cynthia answered, putting the Lance at ease.

"What about Uto? Since the attack was moved to an earlier date, he might be present." Alea asked, a bit of unease escaping with her words.

"No need to worry about him. Uto is still on dungeon duty according to Seris. I'll also be paying him a visit the day before the attack." I told Alea.

"What for? Won't it be a problem if a retainer goes missing all of a sudden?" This time it was Aya who asked.

"I'm not going to kill him, that's for Alea to do when the war begins. I just want to use him as a courier." I said with a smirk.

They all looked at me weirdly before Aya spoke again. "Will Seele be helping us? I know we are more than capable of handling the situation, but having an Asura as backup would be nice."

"No, she will just observe from a distance, Seele doesn't want to risk giving Agrona any reason to renegotiate the treaty." Tess was the one who answered this time.

"I don't see how just being here risks anything, but whatever. I don't have any more questions, you guys?" Aya said as she looked around the room.

No one said anything so Virion took that as his queue to finish up our meeting. "Alright, let's go over the plan one last time then. The Lances will approach each from one side while eliminating any mana beasts they come across and incapacitating any enemies on the way. Tess will mobilize the student council to evacuate and defend the students. Sylvie will direct the adventures to make sure no one is left behind. Meanwhile Arthur will have the disciplinary committee roam the campus to deal with any stragglers while he keeps the radical faction busy. Is that clear?"

"Yes commander!" We replied in unison.

"Good. Once this is finished we will use the artifacts Arthur and Varay got from the Archivist to remove the limiters on all Lances except Olfred. Far away from any Asura in the case they are present, of course. With that, the meeting is adjourned."

We all left the room to go make sure we had our equipment prepared. For everyone else it was just armor and weapon maintenance, but I needed a few extra things. The first thing I did was visit Gideon to get my mask back.

I had asked the artificer to make some changes to the voice altering component, so that the message I was planning to send Agrona was more convincing.

After picking up my mask, Gideon kept pestering me for my ideas but I managed to convince him to wait a little longer, since there were still plenty of incomplete projects he needed to work on. Now with my mask in hand, I had everything I needed for my next encounter with Uto. All that was left was to wait.

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"Ready to kick some ass, princess?" Regis asked as we approached the chamber beneath Widown's Crypt, where Uto was commanding a small force of Alacryan soldiers responsible for corrupting mana beasts in the area.

"Couldn't be more ready even if I wanted." I replied while giving him a mental nod.

I had been waiting for the retainer to send his forces away before engaging for the past hour or so. It was a good thing I did, as I managed to learn quite a bit about the process of corruption. Things like the equipment needed, the tactics used to subdue the beasts and how long it took the process to complete. I had a vague idea before thanks to Agrona's journal, but little details like this were usually skipped as they didn't matter as much in the grand scheme of things.